Every time I say I cannot possibly take on another pig, one
comes along that reaches out to me with such need I cannot refuse.
Honalee was abandoned, no one knows how long ago, the people who
found her had just moved there and started seeing her. It was way out in mountain country, and she was left beside the
road.. and there she stayed, not 3 feet off the road in a nest of grass where she waited day after day for her family
to come back for her. I have no way to know how long she waited; her bones stick out of
her like posts under a fallen tent. Her backbone rises up out of her back like a hand rail. Her teeth are loose and
gums sore. She has mange and lice. She has deep vertical splits in her hooves. And she is terrified by the sight of
dogs.
When we got her home and unloaded her into a pen she got a drink
and spotted the blanket in the bed and ran to it, burying herself under it with her ragged tail wagging as fast as it
could go. It must have been the closest thing to home she had seen in many months.
I don't know if she will live, but I think she will, and I know
if she does, she will never ever be hungry again. And she will never lie night after night in the rain and cold and
wonder where her family is, or when they are coming back for her.
A Promise for Honalee.
You didn't know
They didn't care
You stayed and stayed
And waited there
Until one day
a call was made
trailer loaded
plans were laid
We brought you here
We could not bring
The ones who left you
In the spring
We promise food
And warmth and shade
We promise new friends
Will be made
We promise doctors
when you're ill
An no dogs hunting
you to kill
And if you give us love
One day
we promise that
we won't betray
Update on Honalee Feb 2004
After months of fresh vegetables, fruit, Juice Plus vegetable concentrate and Mazuri feed, and a warm place to sleep,
Honalee has blossomed into the normal rounded shape that we know and love. Even her little face is rounded out. She is
permanently deaf from whatever illness had befallen her while she was starving so she may never dance at a Piggy
cotillion but she is alive and well and will never again know hardship.
